Merry Bloomsday and a Happy New Bloomsyear!

Happy Bloomsday! As usual, I’m not spending Bloomsday in Dublin, but out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I was there last week. As proof, here’s a picture of my son having the time of his life on the James Joyce Centre’s interactive Ulysses device. I'm pretty sure it's called the Ulyssesotron.

It was the first time I’d been to Dublin since I was a child, long before I had any interest in James Joyce. I didn’t have a lot of time there, sadly, so my indulgent family and I tore through the city in a mad dash, trying to ingest as much historical and architectural information as I could in five hours. I hope one day I’ll find time to take a proper research trip.